Who’s going to bring a fuel-cell scooter to California?

As I continue my deep dive into all things hydrogen, one of the first items that I want to share is my fascination with the idea behind a fuel cell scooter.

But first a detour… A few months ago, my wife and I started making plans to travel through Italy… and when it became a reality last month, there were only a few things on my “must do” list… One was taking pasta and pizza making classes and the other was riding a Vespa through the wine country. I seriously love love love driving scooters (and even posted some way too long videos of me riding through Vietnam a while back). There’s something super liberating about scooters and I only wish it made more sense to make it my daily vehicle here in SoCal.

Which leads me to today’s news that comes out of India: Triton EV unleashed Hydrogen-Fuel Scooters .

How cool is this! I start researching hydrogen and within minutes, a company announces a fuel-cell scooter.

Triton EV Hydrogen-Fuel Scooter

With a son who’s going through the process of getting his driver’s license, I’m fascinated by the idea of getting him a scooter and think fuel-cell scooter would be like icing on the cake. We live in a beach community where he really doesn’t need to go far or get on a freeway, so this would give him a ton of freedom without the high cost of car-ownership (and parking) in our area.

This news about the Triton EV Scooter sent me on a deep dive of others making fuel cell scooters. The two that seem to get reasonable press, were the Mob-ion out of Paris and the Suzuki Scooter that was being tested in the UK.

The Suzuki scooter isn’t all that interesting in that the news seems years old… Maybe Suzuki will do something interesting with this scooter at some point, but I’m not seeing any evidence online.

The Mob-ion, however is FASCINATING. I’ve been translating some of the pages, so not sure I got it all right, but it seems that the vehicles are already in production and ready to buy… but the part that makes it so interesting is the use of hydrogen cartridges.

I saw a few months ago, Toyota was demonstrating a similar cartridges concept for cars, but had no idea it was already in production in a slightly different setting.

As a buyer of a fuel cell vehicle, I can confirm that getting access to hydrogen stations is the biggest pain point… The idea of a cartridge systems similar to the way propane tanks are sold would open up the opportunities tremendously. I envision a world where tanks are dropped off at my house and/or at least as easy to pick up as a propane tank (who needs a gas station when you can refill at any Home Depot or 7-11).

I’m still in the beginning stages of understanding the vehicles currently being developed with fuel cell technology. If I missed a viable fuel cell scooter, I’d love to hear about them.

And if you’re aware of a company that’s even remotely close to launching one of these for the California market, definitely let me know!

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